For Teaching

1 Maccabees 16: What the Passage Says

84 claims across 24 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Maccabees 16 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

John comes from Gazera to tell Simon what Cendebeus has done, and Simon sends out his sons Judas and John with twenty thousand men, who cross the brook, rout Cendebeus, and return to Judea. Ptolemeus the son of Abubus, put in charge of the plain of Jericho and married to the high priest's daughter, plans to take the country for himself; he invites Simon and two of his sons to a banquet at the stronghold Docus and kills them there with hidden men. He then writes to the king for troops and sends men to kill John and to seize Jerusalem and the temple hill, but John is warned first and kills the men sent against him. The chapter closes by pointing to the chronicles of John's time as high priest for the rest of his deeds.

Claim by Claim

16:1
- John went up from Gazara.
- John told Simon his father what Cendebeus had done.
16:2
- Simon called his two eldest sons, Judas and John.
- Simon said to them that he, his brothers, and his father's house had fought the wars of Israel from his youth until that day.
- Simon said things had prospered in their hands.
- Simon said they had delivered Israel many times.
16:3
- Simon said he was now old.
- Simon said his sons were of sufficient age, by God's mercy.
- Simon told them to take the place of himself and his brother.
- Simon told them to go out and fight for their nation.
- Simon said the help from heaven should be with them.
16:4
- He chose twenty thousand men of war out of the country, along with horsemen.
- They went out against Cendebeus.
- They spent the night at Modin.
16:5
- They rose in the morning.
- They went into the plain.
- A great host of footmen and horsemen came against them.
- There was a brook between the two forces.
16:6
- He and his people pitched camp opposite them.
- He saw that the people were afraid to cross the brook.
- He crossed over first himself.
- The men saw him.
- The men crossed over after him.
16:7
- He divided his men.
- He set the horsemen in the midst of the footmen.
- The enemies' horsemen were very many.
16:8
- They sounded the trumpets.
- The King James calls the trumpets holy.
- Cendebeus and his host were put to flight.
- Many of Cendebeus's men were slain.
- Those who were left fled to the stronghold.
16:9
- Judas, John's brother, was wounded at that time.
- John pursued them until he came to Cedron.
- The King James says Cendebeus had built Cedron; the Greek says only that he built it, without naming who.
16:10
- They fled to the towers in the fields of Azotus.
- He burned it with fire.
- The King James says about two thousand men of them were slain; the Greek says about one thousand.
- He returned into Judea in peace.
16:11
- Ptolemeus the son of Abubus had been made captain over the plain of Jericho.
- Ptolemeus had abundance of silver and gold.
16:12
- Ptolemeus was the high priest's son in law.
16:13
- Ptolemeus's heart was lifted up.
- Ptolemeus intended to get the country for himself.
- Ptolemeus plotted deceitfully against Simon and his sons to destroy them.
16:14
- Simon was visiting the cities in the country.
- Simon was taking care for their good ordering.
- Simon went down to Jericho with his sons Mattathias and Judas.
- This was in the year one hundred seventy-seven.
- This was in the eleventh month, the month called Sabat.
16:15
- The son of Abubus received them deceitfully into a little stronghold called Docus.
- The son of Abubus had built that stronghold.
- He made them a great banquet.
- He had hidden men there.
16:16
- Simon and his sons drank largely.
- Ptolemee and his men rose up.
- They took their weapons.
- They came upon Simon in the banqueting place.
- They slew Simon.
- The King James says they slew his two sons; the Greek says his sons.
- They slew certain of his servants.
16:17
- Ptolemee committed a great treachery.
- Ptolemee recompensed evil for good.
16:18
- Ptolemee wrote these things.
- Ptolemee sent word to the king to send him forces to aid him.
- Ptolemee offered to deliver the country and the cities to the king.
16:19
- Ptolemee sent others to Gazara to kill John.
- Ptolemee sent letters to the tribunes to come to him.
- Ptolemee promised to give the tribunes silver, gold, and rewards.
16:20
- Ptolemee sent others to take Jerusalem.
- Ptolemee sent others to take the mountain of the temple.
16:21
- One had run ahead to Gazara.
- He told John that his father and brothers were slain.
- He told John that Ptolemee had sent men to slay John also.
16:22
- When John heard this he was greatly astonished.
- John seized the men who had come to destroy him.
- John killed them.
- John knew that they sought to destroy him.
16:23
- There are remaining acts of John not recounted here.
- There are his wars.
- There are the worthy deeds he did.
- There is the building of the walls he made.
- There are his doings.
16:24
- These things are written in the chronicles of John's priesthood.
- The record runs from the time he was made high priest after his father.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

16:1: Gazera is Gezer, a fortified town on the edge of the coastal plain northwest of Jerusalem. Simon had captured it and put his son John in command there. This John is John Hyrcanus, who takes over the nation at the end of the chapter. Cendebeus was a Greek Seleucid officer stationed on the coast with orders to raid Judean territory.
16:2: Simon is the last living of the five sons of Mattathias, the priest whose family led the revolt; the brothers, including Judas Maccabeus, had died one by one in the fighting. "My father's house" means that family and its descendants, not a building.
16:3: "Me and my brother" is singular in most Greek copies, probably meaning Jonathan, the brother who led the nation just before Simon, though a few copies read "my brothers," taking in all of them. The oddness is in the original, not in the translation.
16:4: Modin was the family's home village, where Mattathias first refused to sacrifice to Greek gods and started the revolt, and where the family tombs stood. Camping there on the way to battle placed the sons at the spot where their grandfather's fight began.
16:5: A plain is wide flat land with no hills. Foot soldiers are soldiers who walk and fight on the ground.
16:7: Horses could run fast and scatter soldiers on foot. Putting the horsemen in the middle kept the walking soldiers safe.
16:8: The "holy trumpets" are the silver trumpets sounded by priests, made and used according to the instructions in Numbers 10, where blowing them in battle was a formal call for God to remember his people. They are signaling instruments, not ordinary military horns.
16:9: Cedron, also spelled Kidron, is a town out on the coastal plain that Cendebeus had fortified as a forward base. It is not the Kidron valley beside Jerusalem.
16:10: Azotus is the Greek name for Ashdod, one of the old Philistine cities on the coast, by this time a Seleucid stronghold. "He burned it with fire" refers back to Cedron, the fortified town of the previous verse.
16:11: "Made captain" means appointed governor, a civil and military post over the Jericho district under Simon's own government. The point of mentioning his silver and gold is that the post was lucrative and gave him the means to hire men.
16:12: The high priest in question is Simon himself, who held both the high priesthood and the rule of the nation. Ptolemeus had married Simon's daughter, which is why he was trusted with the Jericho command.
16:13: "His heart being lifted up" is a Hebrew idiom for arrogance, the sense that one has outgrown one's place. English keeps a trace of it in the phrase "puffed up."
16:14: The dates are counted from the founding of the Seleucid Greek kingdom, so the 177th year is about 135 or 134 BC. Sabat, usually spelled Shebat, is the eleventh month of the Jewish calendar, falling in late January and February. Simon's tour of the towns is the routine business of a ruler inspecting his administration.
16:15: Docus, or Dok, was a small fortress in the steep hills above Jericho, a private strongpoint Ptolemeus had built for himself. "Received them" is the ordinary word for welcoming a guest, which is what makes what follows a betrayal.
16:16: In this world a host who set food before guests was bound to protect them while they were under his roof, and guests at a banquet were unarmed and off guard. Attacking men at your own table was the worst breach of trust the culture recognized.
16:18: "The king" is the Seleucid king Antiochus VII, whose authority the Maccabees had thrown off. Ptolemeus is offering to hand Judea back to foreign rule in exchange for being installed as its governor.
16:19: "Tribunes" translates a Greek term for officers commanding a thousand men. These are Simon's own commanders, and Ptolemeus is trying to buy the army's loyalty with cash before news of the murder spreads.
16:20: "The mountain of the temple" is the temple hill in Jerusalem, a walled compound that functioned as a fortress as well as a sanctuary. Whoever held it held the religious and political center of the nation.
16:21: "Quoth he" is old English for "he said." The sentence slips from reported speech into the messenger's own words partway through, which the Greek does as well.
16:23: Verses 23 and 24 copy the closing formula used for each king in the books of Kings, which signs off a reign by pointing the reader to an official record book. Using it here presents John Hyrcanus as a ruler in that same line.
16:24: "The chronicles of his priesthood" was an official record of John Hyrcanus's years as high priest, a document that has not survived. The book stops at this point because its author was writing during or just after his rule, which ran from 134 to 104 BC, so there was nothing further to tell.

Read 1 Maccabees 16